The Annual FrankGrimes Torture Thread

[FrankGrimes]

I've got the perfect woman to keep you in line:

 

Maude! I actually like Maude. I used to watch a little of that in syndication

in the 80s. Why? I have no idea.

 

Now you really WILL have nightmares.

 

I'd rather spend an evening with Maude than watch Coop, Ford, the Duke, and

Greer Garson. Those are nightmares.

 

Snow makes me sleepier than rain. When the elements are raging outside, I get a delicious sense of coziness and security huddling in front of that fireplace with Tom and Smithy, listening to Bing (either as Brom Bones -- love that video -- or warbling I'm Dreaming Of A White Christmas)

 

I'm the opposite. Rain and snow are very romantic to me. What's more cozy and

secure than snuggling inside?

 

My romantic fantasies are more the outdoor variety, involving meadows and fields,

on a lovely end-of-summer afternoon.

 

What is this, The Sound of Music? So the hills come to life outdoors, eh?

 

 

 

I do miss my lost-weekend looking crustacean, but you'll do in the meantime.

 

Ahhh, yes, Mr. In the Meantime. It's the part I was born to live.

 

I highly recommend my namesake in THE LADY EVE. Wonderful romantic

comedy, and Hank is very funny. ("Snakes are my life!")

 

I like The Lady Eve. I particularly like Coburn and Missy as father and

daughter. I love their relationship.

 

I'll be at 711 Ocean Drive tomorrow if you need to reach me. I'll slip you a glass key.

 

And I'll be a lady for a day, looking for a champion among all the king's

men. Oh, wait. That's no good. I guess I'll be the first to die on Sinbad's 7th voyage

across the pacific. I told him that six was enough. But did he listen? No. He must be

a snobby Texan.

 

Although it's too bad you don't remember the lovely Adrienne Barbeau. She's top-heavy with talent.

 

The former Mrs. John Carpenter? Ohh, I know her. I saw this movie in the drive-in theater when I was nine:

 

[Bronxgirl48]

I got up to go to the bathroom and for some reason gravitated towards the computer.

 

I'm supposed to be asleep.

 

Wait, maybe I'm dreaming.

 

I didn't make myself clear I guess (ironic since you keep telling me how communicative I am) about the snow and the rain. There's nothing more romantic than sitting and cuddling in front of a crackling fireplace But that's just the warm-up, so to speak, that's first and second base.

Home runs are best enjoyed amid nature and grass and trees and blue skies and birdies a-twittering and the wind gently rustling the leaves, and the smell of roses and daffodils and lilacs wafting through the fragrant lush summer air.

 

Please, not THE SOUND OF MUSIC!! (now I KNOW I'm having a nightmare) I love Julie but this movie is not one of my favorites. Get those hills away from me, please! (I prefer the Pink Panther parody)

 

You might as well admit your bedroom is surrounded by posters from HIGH NOON, RANDOM HARVEST, ANGEL AND THE BADMAN, and

DRUMS ALONG THE MOHAWK.

 

All the guys I know shriek with horror when Bea Arthur is mentioned.

But appreciating Adrienne Barbeau re-establishes your manhood once more.

 

But....does Robert Taylor thrill you, not that there's anything wrong with that? Do you wish you were his squaw, in DEVIL'S DOORWAY?

 

Geez, I give you that glass key and you run rampant with cleverness.

I can't compete with you at this hour of the night. I'll have to come back tomorrow and show you up.

 

Sweet dreams,

 

Veronica

[FrankGrimes]

Go to sleep, Lucia. The Captain can't come a callin' when you're awake at the computer.

 

I'll reply to your round trippers tomorrow, Slugger. It's time for me to place my fake Smithy

moustache on and kiss my Greer poster good night.

 

Here's hopin' the fog rolls in...

[Film_Fatale]

> {quote:title=FrankGrimes wrote:}{quote}

> I'd rather spend an evening with Maude than watch Coop, Ford, the Duke, and

> Greer Garson. Those are nightmares.

>

 

You keep Maude, I'll take Coop, Ford, the Duke and Greer Garson. :x

[Minya]

*While you and Tom are in the cabin,someone else is going to be in a Cave.*

 

ZOMG!!! (not sure what the Z is supposed to be for)

 

Seeing Nick Cave live has reduced me to text speak!!! I'm partially deaf now (forgot my trusty earplugs) and I'm too amped to go to sleep, which is bad because I have to be up in approximately four and half hours or so to go to work, but I'd do it all again (oh wait, I AM) to see that man on stage. I don't know how he does it, but for him yes-I'd have like, ten thousand of his babies and live on a farm.

 

Actually Grimey, I thought of you a few times during the show-they didn't play any of the stuff that you heard on youtube, but it made me think of a few more tunes to recommend. Well, maybe.

[Film_Fatale]

> {quote:title=Minya wrote:}{quote}

> ZOMG!!! (not sure what the Z is supposed to be for)

>

 

Some say it's just because the Z key is close to the shift key, so it may have started out as a typo.

[Minya]

*Some say it's just because the Z key is close to the shift key, so it may have started out as a typo*

 

Ahhhh! It all becomes clear now.

[hlywdkjk]

Mr. FrankGrimes -

 

Just because I don't think you have suffered much lately. Not where it counts anyway.

http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/la-et-tall24-2008sep24,0,2370796.story

From The Los Angeles Times

 

*Naughty Ladies of Noirdom Strut Their Stuff*

UCLA archive's 'Cool Drinks of Water' series celebrates 'Columbia's Noir Girls of the '40s and '50s.'

By Kenneth Turan, Times Movie Critic

September 24, 2008

 

*Audiences at the time* thought of them simply as bad girls, but the UCLA Film & Television Archive is determined to salvage their reputations. The archive's exceptionally interesting 12-film repertory series *"Cool Drinks of Water: Columbia's Noir Girls of the '40s and '50s"* shows that making their acquaintance is a pleasure for lots of reasons.

 

The series, which begins Friday at the Billy Wilder Theater at the Hammer Museum, starts with a bang with a _terrific Gloria Grahame double bill_, Fritz Lang's *Human Desire* and the lesser-known *The Glass Wall.* Over the next several weeks, double bills will focus on Lizabeth Scott, Nina Foch, Cleo Moore, Evelyn Keyes and Rochelle Hudson.

 

If these names are not familiar, the directors -- with the exception of Lang and possibly Joseph H. Lewis -- will likely be even less so. If you can wax rhapsodic about Max- well Shane, Leigh Jason, Earl McEvoy or Max Nosseck, you've been spending too much time in darkened rooms.

 

The auteurs of "Noir Girls" are not the directors but the Columbia Pictures studio and the noir genre itself. It was UCLA's Andrea Alsberg who saw the connections and made use of the spectacular new 35-millimeter black-and-white prints of these films overseen by Grover Crisp, Sony's guru of preservation and restoration.

 

*The UCLA series is not only a chance* to see rarely screened films on a big screen, it's a glimpse into a forgotten time. These films were released between 1940 and 1956, when the studios consistently made B pictures with at least a hint of noir in them, which meant shadowy cinematography and dialogue like "she'd use her grandmother's bones to pry open a cash register."

 

One of the satisfactions of this series is to see such actors as Lee J. Cobb, Richard Crenna, William Holden and Charlton Heston before they became great big names.

 

It's the women who are the focus, however, and even if the actresses featured here never got to the Bette Davis or Joan Crawford level of stardom, these films reveal them to be gifted individuals.

 

*Gloria Grahame, who starts out the series*, is perhaps its most complex actress, able to effortlessly portray complicated, tormented characters. *The Glass Wall* pairs her with Italian heartthrob Vittorio Gassman as a Holocaust survivor trying to get by in New York, and *Human Desire* gives her a meaty part.

 

Directed by Lang, following in the footsteps of Jean Renoir, whose "La Bete Humaine" with Jean Gabin also adapted the Zola novel, the brooding, pessimistic "Desire" delves into the complicated psychology of relationships with Grahame as a woman caught between husband Broderick Crawford and lover Glenn Ford.

 

*The other highlight of the series* is a chance to see Joseph H. Lewis' B-movie classic *My Name Is Julia Ross,* which stars an empathetic and vulnerable *Nina Foch* as a desperate young woman who takes a secretarial job that is not what it seems. With its terrifying air of disturbing mystery, "Julia Ross" packs more than would seem possible into its taut 65-minute running time. Also on the bill is *The Dark Past,* with Foch as gangster William Holden's scene-stealing girl.

 

The other actresses are equally distinctive, but no one had a voice like *Lizabeth Scott*, a Lauren Bacall type sometimes promoted as "The Threat." In *Two of a Kind,* she enlists Edmond O'Brien in a scam and in *Bad for Each Other,* written by Irving Wallace and Horace McCoy, she inveigles idealistic doctor Charlton Heston into giving the profitable life a try.

 

With her long blond hair and kewpie doll face, *Cleo Moore* was unmistakable to moviegoers of the 1950s. In *One Girl's Confession,* she plays an archetypal bad girl who goes good only as a last resort, while in *Over-Exposed* she's a self-made photographer who has a hard time convincing people she's on the level.

 

*Evelyn Keyes, author of the irresistible Hollywood memoir* "Scarlett O'Hara's Younger Sister," displays the widest range here. In *Dangerous Blondes,* she plays bright and lively as half of a husband-and-wife detective team; in *The Killer That Stalked New York* she is moving as a Typhoid Mary type who unknowingly brings smallpox to Manhattan.

 

*Rochelle Hudson* is the least known of these actresses, and her films are the pulpiest of the series. *Girls Under 21* has her as a gangster's moll returning to the old neighborhood, while the truly bizarre *Island of Doomed Men* has her costarring as the wife of Peter Lorre's demented slave driver.

 

*An interesting aspect* of many of these films is the way a concern for social issues coexists with even the most unapologetic melodrama. *The Dark Past* deals with rehabilitation versus imprisonment, *Bad for Each Other* talks of the need to give back to society, *Over-Exposed* concerns itself with journalistic ethics. Clearly, pulp intended for adults has more to recommend it than the youth-oriented pabulum of today.

 

Screenings -

UCLA Film & Television Archive presents *"Cool Drinks of Water: Columbia's Noir Girls of the '40s and '50s,"*

7:30 p.m. (unless otherwise indicated) at Billy Wilder Theater, Hammer Museum, 10899 Wilshire Blvd., Westwood. (310) 206-8013 or www.cinema.ucla.edu.

 

Friday: "The Glass Wall," "Human Desire"

 

Sunday at 7 p.m.: "Two of a Kind," "Bad for Each Other"

 

Oct. 8: "My Name Is Julia Ross," "The Dark Past"

 

Oct. 12 at 7 p.m.: "One Girl's Confession," "Over-Exposed"

 

Oct. 17: "Dangerous Blondes," "The Killer That Stalked New York"

 

Oct. 18: "Girls Under 21," "Island of Doomed Men"

 

Kyle In Hollywood

--------------------------

"Ooohh, I had a Belgian Rabbit and I named him "Little Flair".

He was very introspective. What you'd call an ingrown hare."

*F. McGee*

[Bronxgirl48]

Thanks, mate, for the Aussie hat info!

[Bronxgirl48]

Oh, my, kathy, just reading about your wading through that infernal ragweed is giving me an allergic reaction right now! I wish it could disappear as well....I'm also more allergic to commercial soap and perfume than I used to be.

 

I was telling april that Joel McCrea's parson reminded me a bit of Atticus in TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD (see Movie Rambles)

 

We're both big sisters, only I've got the one brother. He was sort of stand-offish as we were growing up, and never let me hug him; he didn't like displays of affection from anyone; only later did I learn he was really hurting emotionally and couldn't reach out for comfort, but years of therapy have helped him (somewhat).

 

I just got a call from a colleague who asked if I could take over her class tomorrow night. I told her I wouldn't be able to because of family matters.

 

In reality, I want to watch the final Kay Francis line-up. (and don't trust my VCR right now)

[FrankGrimes]

Kylefornia! You're an evil S.O.B., that's why I like ya. I can't thank you enough for posting

this info, even if it truly is torture to me. It absolutely floors me to see Gloria Grahame and

the other femmes fatale of Columbia getting such a wonderful and deserved spotlight.

I really cannot believe it to be true. Andrea Alsberg needs to be commended.

 

Did you catch Girls Under 21 is being screened? TCM is going to be showing

My Name is Julia Ross later this year. It's one of the films I'm most looking

forward to.

 

I'm thinking some of the films being shown during "Cool Drinks of Water" could be headed

to DVD next year. Sony has mentioned the release of two film noir boxes in 2009. Human Desire is expected to be one of the titles. I'd love The Glass Wall to also make the cut.

 

I just loved the following excerpt:

 

An interesting aspect of many of these films is the way a concern for social issues coexists with even the most unapologetic melodrama. The Dark Past deals with rehabilitation versus imprisonment, Bad for Each Other talks of the need to give back to society, Over-Exposed concerns itself with journalistic ethics. Clearly, pulp intended for adults has more to recommend it than the youth-oriented pabulum of today.

 

This is something that I'm really drawn to in film noir. Many films noir feature social

commentary.

 

Thanks again for sharing this info with me. I greatly appreciate the torture.

[MissGoddess]

Wow!! Sweet Rochelle Hudson ended up the wife of Peter "the slavedriver" Lorre??? My

goodness! I always think of her as the dear little ingenue in the Will Rogers movies.

 

She had a very striking look in the early thirties. I wonder how she looks in those "B" noirs.

 

 

[MissGoddess]

I just got a call from a colleague who asked if I could take over her class tomorrow night. I told her I wouldn't be able to because of family matters.

 

In reality, I want to watch the final Kay Francis line-up. (and don't trust my VCR right now)

 

[coopsgirl]

*Island of Doomed Men*, that sounds familiar. Isn't that where Frank gets stuck on an island with us Coop girls and all we do is talk about Gary all day and night and watch his movies incessantly?

[Bronxgirl48]

Hello, joltin' joe.

 

Our nation turns its lonely eyes to you.

 

Yes, the fog rolled in last night. The Captain was in a playful mood.

I leave it to your imagination. Ghosts have more fun!

 

Saw 711 OCEAN DRIVE for the first time today. Another winning Edmond O'Brien performance. His character is part tragic hero, part Ralph Kramden, lol, full of hubris and frustration, who through electronic smarts gets power hungry, falls in love, and meets his fate. It's baffling how all these good looking broads are attracted to him, though, especially refined Joanne Dru, who is suffering under an unpleasant marriage to tailored but abusive Don Porter (effectively nasty)

 

CHAMPION was a bit old fashioned, what with the crippled brother (Arthur Kennedy can play this in his sleep) and the mother who thinks her son is "a good boy". But Kirk gives a charismatic performance. I didn't think the boxing sequences were compelling, but then what do I know; the only movie with this sport in it I like is HERE COMES MR. JORDAN.

 

But forget Stanley Kramer -- THE GIANT CLAW is coming.

 

I'll leave you now, THE GREAT McGINTY is on.

 

Message was edited by: Bronxgirl48

[hlywdkjk]

*"I wonder how she looked in those B-Noirs"* - MissGoddess

 

Rochelle Hudson and Peter Lorre in *Island Of Doomed Men*

from the link to the LATimes article below

[MissGoddess]

She STILL looked fantastic! Thank you, Kyle.

[Film_Fatale]

> {quote:title=hlywdkjk wrote:}{quote}

>

> *Naughty Ladies of Noirdom Strut Their Stuff*

> UCLA archive's 'Cool Drinks of Water' series celebrates 'Columbia's Noir Girls of the '40s and '50s.'

> By Kenneth Turan, Times Movie Critic

> September 24, 2008

>

 

That's an awesome read - wish I could get away to L.A. for the run of the retrospective. B-)

[hlywdkjk]

*"Kylefornia! You're an evil S.O.B...."* - FrankGrimes

I assume that's for Spotlight Of Brilliance, right?

 

*"...that's why I like ya."*

Much obliged!

 

*"Did you catch "Girls Under 21" is being screened?"*

Mm-hmmm.

 

 

Kyle In Hollywood

--------------------------

"Ooohh, I had a Belgian Rabbit and I named him "Little Flair".

He was very introspective. What you'd call an ingrown hare."

*F. McGee*

[Film_Fatale]

> {quote:title=hlywdkjk wrote:}{quote}

> *"Did you catch "Girls Under 21" is being screened?"*

> Mm-hmmm.

>

>

>

 

Oh, I'll bet someone is going to enjoy that!

[FrankGrimes]

"Kylefornia! You're an evil S.O.B...." - FrankGrimes

 

I assume that's for Spotlight Of Brilliance, right?

 

Yes, an evil Spotlight of Brilliance.

 

"...that's why I like ya."

 

Much obliged!

 

All these film noir festivals in L.A. are great. I'm very appreciative of you informing me of

them. I sure hope they draw decent crowds. Those who put these wonderful festivals

together need to see appreciation for their work.

 

"Did you catch "Girls Under 21" is being screened?"

 

Mm-hmmm.

 

I never heard of the film until you posted the poster on your always fun thread.

 

Thanks again.

 

Did you watch any of The Great McGinty tonight?

[FrankGrimes]

Island of Doomed Men, that sounds familiar. Isn't that where Frank gets stuck on an island with us Coop girls and all we do is talk about Gary all day and night and watch his movies incessantly?

 

I'm already trapped on that island. It's definitely not a return to paradise.

 

[FrankGrimes]

What's up, Captain Cavewoman -- Seeing Nick Cave live has reduced me to

text speak!!! I'm partially deaf now (forgot my trusty earplugs) and I'm too amped to

go to sleep, which is bad because I have to be up in approximately four and half

hours or so to go to work, but I'd do it all again (oh wait, I AM) to see that man on

stage.

 

Who needs a red dress when you can have Nick Cave... two nights in a row?

 

I don't know how he does it, but for him yes-I'd have like, ten thousand of his babies

and live on a farm.

 

My goodness! That's a lot of bad seeds! And it better be an ant farm.

 

Actually Grimey, I thought of you a few times during the show-they didn't play

any of the stuff that you heard on youtube, but it made me think of a few more tunes

to recommend. Well, maybe.

 

So where are these tunes? Do I have to go find them, Easter Bunny?

[hlywdkjk]

*"Did you watch any of "The Great McGinty" tonight?"* - FG

 

Sure did. You? Brian Donlevy is a joy to hear. "Cut with the applesauce." "That gink?" But my favorite has to be "It's Muggley Wump, the tor-toyse".

 

Kyle In Hollywood

--------------------------

"Ooohh, I had a Belgian Rabbit and I named him "Little Flair".

He was very introspective. What you'd call an ingrown hare."

*F. McGee*

[Film_Fatale]

My favourite line in *The Great McGinty* was "Looks like the suit got you !" B-)